hi,
some days ago my roommate came to me and told me that his laptop (acer aspire 1800 with 3GHz, 512 MB DDR , ATI graphics and v2.2 Bios.) wasn't working at all, it would not getting started. So I first thought about some trivial problems with his Windows XP what he had updated short time before. When starting from the Win CD did not work (after several trials to start it just as is) I said some good words about Linux and convinced him, to try the Kubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon 7.10) Desktop CD.

We could start it and after he worked a bit with it, he wanted to install it. So we installed the full system, but when trying to reboot to complete the installation the laptop also freezed. It only happens on the bootsequence, showing "starting up ..." or just a blinking cursor, short before the grub sequence.

Amazingly I can enter the grub menu, when the disc drive is open (why ?!), but when I then try to test the ram via memtest86+, the system freezes unregularly after some seconds (maximum was 6% pass and 73% of the actual test, no defect ram is reported). The probability of not-freezing is higher, when the laptop is cold (min. 60 minutes off). When I had the chance to start Kubuntu some hours ago, I tried to test the hard disc via smartctl, but there were no errors at all.

So I wonder: what could it be? I'm sure that something of the hardware isnt'n working properly, but it's confusing that it's sometimes possible to start and then the laptop works pretty fine. Tomorrow I will try to make some tests with a BootCD, but I doubt that the laptop will let me come to this point and not freezes before loading the disc.

Anyone an idea what here could be wrong? And how we can test it?

Hi, you said it : Check the temperatures (lm_sensors and hddtemp).

Can you hear the fan running?
If it is try cleaning the fans;
http://mobileoffice.about.com/od/usi...leanlaptop.htm

hi,
yes, the fans are all running, unmistakable. My roommate wiped off the dust and there is a strong airflow on each of the three fans (Sometimes they are *very* loud, sounding like an airplane, but seems typical for a Pentium IV).
I'm not at home now, but I hope my roommate can send me the output of lm-sensors and hddtemp soon.

On the topic of testing: I could not proceed to any results. I tried the "UltimateBootCD" but I did not get one of the tests to an end, each of them stopped some seconds after I started them. But it was definitely not a fault of the cd, I tested it on my desktop and all tried tests went trough.

Windows used to work and now doesn't...Windows cd can't repair operational state...Sounds like BIOS got changed or some hardware is bad.

Did bios get reset or changed?

Maybe battery (cmos battery on mboard) is getting low.

Has the date/time the laptop shows suddenly reset? I had issue in past when working laptop stopped booting. Upon reboot the date was something long ago. I had bios reload defaults and the PC started working again. The time/date change didn't cause problem but was indicative of a bios-reset. So you can look and see what options you have. There should be defaults and there might also be an optimized setting.

If using P4 your cd is probably IDE? But if it is sata do you have bios set up to run it in ide-mode?

Hm, no, not before the problems appeared. I resetted the bios to test if it is going better after that (but no ...).

Could be. The laptop was bought in January 2005, but only seldomly plugged off the socket.

Ok. My roommate brought the laptop to a shop to check it and fix the problem. I'll write then what was it.